Tag: the universe

Categories
peace solitude

Content With Solitude

This is where I was sat when these thought came to me. I’m going to try to work out how to get them onto photos but just wanted to share them today

Also want to link this to blog from Deepak – Choosing Happiness in all the Wrong Places because I think we are saying similar things with different words.

Solitude – a place where you can sit with the chattering monkey thoughts and let them slowly settle to the river bottom; where you can stay in that place of peace and wait to see what rises again to the surface

Diane Woodrow – June 2025

Being alone doesn’t mean that all that random “monkey chatter” isn’t there. You don’t feel instantly serene and at peace with yourself and the world. But, I believe, if you don’t sit alone for long enough and allow those monkey thoughts to settle, then wait and allow what God/The Universe wants you to consider at that moment, you will never reach peace with yourself.

So to me when I sat by the sea, just me and my dog, I let the thoughts that were bubbling in me about various things rise to the surface then fall to the depths. I didn’t try to pick any out to think of but waited to see what rose up. I then gained some interesting insights into myself and why things unfold as they do and also about a project that looked like it was failing but was going the wrong way. But I had to sit without an agenda, without people pleasing, and trusting to listen to my heart.

Solitude is a place where you can be fully in love and fully trusting in yourself and just being

Dollar Glen, Scotland – June 2025 – photographed by myself

Solitude is glorious when you can see and know yourself in all that you are – your strengths and weaknesses, hurts and joys, mistakes and triumphs – and know that you like and love yourself just as you are at this moment in time.

Solitude isn’t a place of loneliness. Loneliness can happen in a crowd, especially when you are trying to be someone you are not, when you are trying to please others, when you are afraid to reveal who you really are, when you don’t feel like you fit in.

Solitude is a place of calm, of peace, of being, of knowing who you fully are, of knowing what you fully want to do.

Solitude, I believe, is something you can take into a crowd and enjoy who are you with because you are being fully you with no agenda for yourself or for those you are with. Things don’t have to go a certain way because you are calm within yourself for all that time of being alone.

But this can only come about if you are willing to take time out from the noise and hassle of the life we lead, can let go of those monkey chattering thoughts and listen to your heart.

Solitude can be glimpsed through a porthole. Lady’s Tower, Elie, East Neuk, Fife. Photographed by myself June 2025

Categories
bonfire Captive

Take Every Thought Captive

Image from https://hgc.org.my/sermons/take-every-thought-captive/

It’s been a while since I’ve posted . Not because I haven’t had posts in my head but because it is that time of year – that time when one’s head if filled with Christmas stuff; what to get for who and when to send, and what Christmas cards to send to who and why, the whole food and drink thing, and what to do with the long enforced break for some. Head full of thoughts. I’ve also decided to start a Substack with my writing on it which I’ve told people I’ll post 2-3 times a week. I’ve done one week and got a growing following, including one paying subscriber so I probably need to do regular postings. Perhaps should have waited till the new year but ….

This post came from a picture on FB about taking thoughts captive, which I cannnot refind so can’t share the source of this thought with you but did find the lovely picture above. I’ve not read the post/sermon that accompanies it but do feel free if you wish.

Here is the whole Bible verse

We demolish arguments and every pretension …, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

How often do arguments occur because we have let our minds wander off on their own coming up with all sorts of scenarios for what the other person is thinking/feeling/intentions are? I’ve had it with the Christmas present shopping. Once I’ve bought something I go down the rabbit hole of “they won’t like it” “it is too much” “I should have bought X instead”.

I had a lovely challenge over the weekend. A friend had message to say she was off to the park and would meet me there. She was late and I’d bumped into another friend who’d suggested going to see the waves [it was the tail end of Storm Darragh]. Whilst I was on the beach with this friend the other friend phoned to say she was at the park. I told her where I was. It is a walk that leads back to the park but when I got back and phoned her she didn’t answer. I then messaged to say did she want to meet for coffee the following day. No answer. So my mind started its journey of “she doesn’t like me any more” “she’s scary when she’s angry” right the way through to “I’m not sure if I want to be her friend any more”. I then pulled myself together and started taking every one of those random thoughts captive. Because I like visual stuff I imagined these thoughts running like fish along the river of my mind [I think I’ve heard this in a sermon somewhere] and I speared them, gave them a quick look over, then throw them on to a bonfire. Eventually those random thoughts stopped coming and I was at peace with my decision to go to the beach instead of hanging around in the park and felt that all would work out as God/The Universe intended. The following day I got a text from her saying she wasn’t free when I’d said but what about later in the week. When we did meet she didn’t say anything about me going to the beach. It was all over.

How often though do we waste time on those random thoughts? How often do we take things and blow them up out of all proportion?

I could easily have built up arguments in my head about this friendship, built up pretensions. In a course I did about relieving stress this was called “fortune telling” – imagining a future when none of us know what the future looks like. Although this does seem to be what our media and much of social media focuses on – fear of what might happen. Capture those thoughts and throw them away. None of us knows the future. And we build up stress and stress leads of falling out with each other because we aren’t living in the reality that is now.

A couple of nights later I’d had too much sugar before going to bed and woke up with that whole worrying about X,Y and Z. I did the “taking every thought captive” and throwing it on the bonfire and as I did it I cleared the water of my mind, realised that it was a sugar rush going on, went to get a drink and accepted that this was what it was. I didn’t even do the “I shouldn’t have done eaten those sweets so close to bed”. Instead I just accepted that what was was.

I’m learning more and more to do this with other things. So with the presents and the Christmas cards I’ve written, I’m sending with love and a belief that they will be received with love. Because also all thoughts are not to be thrown on to the bonfire and got rid of. Some thoughts are lovely and need to be savoured. That is why it says to capture them but then make them obedient to the mind of Christ which is calm, peaceful, and filled with love.

River at Betws-y-coed September 2023 photographed by myself

Categories
freedom Love

True Freedom

I keep writing and rewriting this post, which is why it has taken a long time. Sometimes posts just fly out of me and other times they struggle. One of the things is that at times I think about who I’m writing to and then almost contain the words that I don’t think would fit that person, which seems a very interesting revelation to myself when I am wanting to write a post about being really free.

So yesterday I got myself a can of Dr Pepper and sat in a cafe looking out the window with pen in hand and waited to see what happened. And here are my thoughts

True freedom is about going with flow and not worry about what other people think.

True freedom is not about achieving or ambition or even having stuff.

True freedom is about being content in your own skin and knowing that what you’ve done is what you’ve done.

True freedom is not about being a success or about succeeding in a world that is always changing its boundaries, goal posts and rules of the race.

True freedom is about not caring what the race is or what the imposed boundaries are.

True freedom is not caring about what other people think so they will love you.

True freedom is not caring about who takes the credit for the success that happen with or around you.

Not caring is not the same as not loving especially if the love comes with strings attached.

True freedom is

Finally able to

Receive

Everything

Envy-free

Devoid of the ties

Of other people’s [and your own]

Motives and expectations

And, I believe, True Freedom can only be obtained when one loves oneself unconditionally and when one knows one is loved unconditionally – especially when one knows that unconditional love comes from the Creator of the Universe/The Universe. But I also think one will struggle to receive that love unless one loves oneself unconditionally and stops comparing oneself to others.